The Syrian started from his daze.
“Holiness,” he stammered, stretching out a hand, “the lists, the lists!”
(He had seen what these were.)
But Silvester only smiled as He tossed the fragments on to the table. Then He stood up.
“You need not trouble, my son.... We shall not need these any more....
“One last word, Eminences.... If there is one heart here that doubts or is afraid, I have a word to say.”
He paused, with an extraordinarily simple deliberateness, ran the eyes round the tense faces turned to Him.
“I have had a Vision of God,” He said softly. “I walk no more by faith, but by sight.”
II
An hour later the priest toiled back in the hot twilight up the path from the village, followed by half-a-dozen silent men, twenty yards behind, whose curiosity exceeded their credulousness. He had left a few more standing bewildered at the doors of the little mud-houses; and had seen perhaps a hundred families, weighted with domestic articles, pour like a stream down the rocky path that led to Khaifa. He had been cursed by some, even threatened; stared upon by others; mocked by a few. The fanatical said that the Christians had brought God’s wrath upon the place, and the darkness upon the sky: the sun was dying, for these hounds were too evil for him to look upon and live. Others again seemed to see nothing remarkable in the state of the weather....